Monday, September 05, 2005

Dress Rehearsals

Big Brother is my pragmatic child. Sometimes that is an absolutely delightful quality--strange as it may sound.
Last night we were discussing the need for him to get used to an earlier bedtime, now that school is about to begin. He will have to be ready to catch the bus at 7:10 AM.
He was negotiating for 5 later minutes of bedtime and wake-up time, and I finally just asked him, "How long do you really need to get ready?"
He thought about that. I reminded him that he can be ready much faster if his schoolbag is packed the night before and put by the front door, and if he knows where his belt is.
"Yeah, I can waste 5 minutes every day looking for that belt," he commented. And a missing belt is an Unforgivable Out-Of-Uniform Offense at his school.
He decided that tomorrow will be his day for a Dress Rehearsal. He will wake up, get dressed, and have breakfast--and time himself. He's planned to make sure he has some time to read at breakfast. I'll have him add 5 minutes onto the final time, "just in case." And we'll come up with a reasonable wake-up time for him based on this.
I'm pretty impressed at his approach. I'm willing to give this a try!

1 comment:

Barb Szyszkiewicz said...

So far so good.
He's enjoys the fact that this puts him in the driver's seat. As long as I don't wind up in the driver's seat, because he's missed the bus while he looks for that belt, it's fine with me!